Last July I was using R to do some social network analysis of Instagram tags. After lots of package downloads, App Developer’s applications, etc., I couldn’t get it to work, only to discover that Instagram had changed its policy the months before. Like many social media platforms, Instagram had restricted access to data through its API (Application Programming Interface). For some, this could be welcome news—after all, third party developers having untrammeled access weakens privacy and serves to expose more and more of our lives to commodification. But this isn’t the whole story. Just because I (a researcher at a mid-tier state university) was having trouble gaining access doesn’t mean that large corporations were having trouble, or the National Security Agency, or Instagram itself. Rather, what we’ve seen with the rise of Big Data as a research object is the progressive commodification of social media. The social network analysis that began as a...
Occasional posts on anthropologically interesting science fiction, anthropological futures and my own future as an anthropologist.